As a result of the recent trends toward cutting the sizes of various machines and appliances into compact form, the rodless cylinders are required to be smaller in size and, for the sake of compactness and stability, to be smaller especially in terms of height of the moving member which is moved along a cylinder body.
On the other hand, for the purpose of adjusting the stroke range of the moving member or for the purpose of absorbing shocks of collision, a stopper support base of a rodless cylinder is fixed on the cylinder body, and a stopper which is equipped with a stopper bolt with a shock absorbing function is mounted on the stopper support base by means of a stroke adjusting screw. The stroke range is adjusted either by shifting the stopper forward or backward relative to the stopper support base or by shifting the position of the stopper support base itself along the cylinder body.
However, the above-described stopper needs to be locked in position by a lock nut in such a way as to maintain a predetermined degree of protrusion from the stopper support base. In this regard, as shown in FIGS. 7 and 8, the lock nut 3 is required to have an outer diameter B commensurate with the screw diameter of the stopper 2. Therefore, in an attempt to cope with a reduction in size of the moving member 5 which is reciprocated on and along the cylinder body 5, if the height of the stopper support base 1 is minimized to a level lower than the moving member 5 to preclude its collision against an object 6 on the moving member 5, the lock nut 3 will stand out higher than the stopper support base 1. This means that the lock nut 3 might become an obstacle to the reciprocating movement of the object 6 attached to the moving member 5, and its size is hinders to the efforts of downsizing rodless cylinders into a compact form.
Further, in order to fix the stopper support base at a desired position in the longitudinal direction of the cylinder body, it has been the conventional practice to grip part of opposite lateral side portions of the cylinder body 4 between the stopper support base 1 and a clamp member 7 as shown in FIG. 9, and to thread setting bolts 8 into the clamp member 7 through the stopper support base 1.
However, when clamped in position by the clamp member 7, the stopper support base 1 is subjected to a force which tends to warp its side portions as seen in the same figure, making it difficult to reduce the thickness of the stopper support base 1. Besides, a difficulty is also encountered in maintaining the clamp member 7 constantly in a predetermined posture. In some cases the stopper support base 1 is mounted on the cylinder body 4 in an inclined or tilted state as shown in FIG. 10.